Innehållsförteckning för September/October 2022 från The Texas Observer

For this issue, Senior Staff Writer Gus Bova traveled to Uvalde, where four months ago a gunman broke into Robb Elementary School and murdered 21 people with an AR-15. The school shooting—the deadliest in Texas history—has reignited the sleepy town of 15,000 a half-century since racial-justice protests roiled the halls of Robb Elementary. Bova looks at what has changed, and what has not, in the once-segregated city as residents clamor again for justice. With polling showing Beto O’Rourke on the heels of Governor Greg Abbott as the election draws near, Senior Staff Writer Justin Miller asks the former congressman how he plans to cinch a victory—and then get anything done with a solidly Republican Legislature. Miller also profiles Dave Carney, the secretive governor-whisperer whose realpolitik helped catapult former President George…

A few days after announcing a record-breaking fundraising haul of nearly $30 million in the first half of 2022, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke hit the road in mid-July for an ambitious Texas barnstorming. Seventy campaign events in over 65 counties, many in deep-red rural towns. Sweating through shirts in the dog days of a brutal summer. Rooms packed to the brim, preaching to and hearing from enemies, skeptics, and apostles alike. Polls indicating a tightening race. Sound familiar? Unlike his 2018 Senate run, O’Rourke is no longer an unknown curiosity from far-flung El Paso. Tarnished by his own ill-advised presidential run and fighting unfavorable headwinds, his bid to deny Abbott a third term as governor is a steep one. But he can still muster some magic on the campaign…

On the afternoon of July 10, Lalo Castillo, a craggy-faced and sturdy 76-year-old, arrived at the northeast corner of Robb Elementary School in southwest Uvalde, where neighbors and acquaintances began assembling for the largest political protest his hometown had seen in 50 years. Long ago, he’d studied reading and math in Robb’s classrooms, his childhood home just a quarter-mile away; almost as long ago, he’d helped lead a student uprising here that reshaped his city. Now, out front of the 67-year-old school—a cluster of old low-slung brick buildings plus a newer addition, nestled in a neighborhood of metal-roofed casitas and pothole-ridden roads—he watched the crowd swell past 500. “I was glad to see young people, children, older people, white people, all kinds of folks that are joining,” Castillo said. “It…

Mention the month of July 2022 to Texans along the Austin-San Antonio corridor, and it will likely conjure involuntary feelings of relentless, all-consuming heat. All things being unequal, many of us escaped into air-conditioned homes, offices, and cars. If we lived close enough to a pool or a place like Austin’s Barton Springs and we could afford the entry fee, we dove in. But those who live and work outdoors or don’t have access to air conditioning faced the full force of the summer—blistering even by Texas standards. Houston, Austin, and San Antonio all logged record-high July temperatures; the state also set a new record for peak electricity usage, then broke it six more times before the month’s end. For me, perhaps the most striking statistic comes from Austin’s EMS department:…

Texas has been appointing state poets laureate since 1933, encouraging distinguished writers to share their talent and promote their craft statewide, but only since 2012 have Texas cities been naming their own poetry ambassadors. San Antonio was first, joined by Houston and other cities, including Corpus Christi and McAllen. This year, Dallas appointed its inaugural poet laureate—after a brief debate ensued over whether the state’s biggest banking city needed a bard at all. “Every single city that can advocate within its city council or [with] its mayor can get a poet laureate. There’s a way to approach and ask them to establish the office,” said Guadalupe Mendez, the 2022 Texas poet laureate. The positions are mostly honorary, usually without assigned duties or salary, and go to poets with extensively published…

Like a designer outlet store holding a liquidation sale for all its merchandise, the Texas Comptroller’s office has had a constant crowd of corporate customers forming a line out the door, eager to get their high-end property tax deals rung up at the register before the sale ends and the store closes for good. This was set in motion last year when the state legislature declined to renew Texas’ largest and most lucrative corporate tax incentive program known as Chapter 313, which is administered by the state comptroller. Despite boosters’ best attempts, too many lawmakers could no longer stomach the brazen bilking and ballooning costs of this tax giveaway scheme. The program, which allowed school districts to give companies 10-year breaks on property taxes for building new industrial projects—with the state…

Mary Beth Rogers’ new memoir, Hope and Hard Truth: A Life in Texas Politics, begins and ends with water. To start, a stone well serves as metaphor for her many decades spent peering through the murky sediment of Texas politics, seeking a clear path to justice; to conclude, a walk along the Pacific coastline, the cold waves washing over her bare feet, symbolizes the inner peace of the last stages of a life bravely lived. In the pages between, Rogers reflects on lessons learned during her whirlwind career. Born in 1940, Rogers—best known as campaign manager and chief of staff to ex-Governor Ann Richards—grew up in Dallas. Her early love of politics was shaped by listening to her parents’ conversations at the breakfast table. Both Democrats, they believed empathy, curiosity, and…

I never imagined my college would fire me for mentioning facts in a classroom. When the administration of Collin College in Plano, just north of Dallas, told me this past January that my contract as a history professor would not be renewed, I was somehow shocked and not totally surprised at the same time. I don’t have the typical resume of a fired professor. My first book, White Metropolis, which describes the history of racism in Dallas, was named a book of the year by the Texas Historical Commission in 2007. In 2021, I won a teaching award from the East Texas Historical Association. During my 14 years at Collin, students consistently praised my talent for making history come alive. Many said that they hated history before taking my class,…

In Vicious Velma’s world, concerts are primal and raw, rich with immediacy and spattered with bodily fluids. Photographer Vera “Velma” Hernandez got her start shooting concert photography in 2014 at a Tulsa punk festival called “Fuck You We Roll OK.” She recalled, “I took some photojournalism in high school, never really did anything after that.” She’d been working at a mall photography kiosk, but didn’t even have a camera of her own. Hernandez (Instagram: @vicious_ velma) had to borrow one from her friend Jenni, who’d invited her to the show. It was at that weekend festival where she realized she’d found her calling: “I just kept it going after that.” Almost a decade later, Vicious Velma is growing beyond the North Texas music scene where she’s made a name for…

Peering into the freshwater springs of San Marcos through a glass-bottom boat is a little like peering back into Texas history. Groundwater bubbles and gushes through ancient limestone to refill the clear, dark turquoise waters of Spring Lake. On the lakebed you can still faintly see the once-tumultuous geologic fault line, where the Hill Country meets the Blackland Prairie, that created these springs millions of years ago. Archeologists think this area is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in North America, and the local Indigenous Miazan/Garza band say their Coahuiltecan ancestors traveled from the underworld into this one using the San Marcos springs as a portal. Since then, the water has been reshaped by people. Edward Burleson, who led the Texas Revolution’s final charge against the Mexican army in…

Our streets didn’t need names We knew where we were Where we’d been Where we were goingSet in the same stateA litany of different placessuffering the same neglectBrazos Frío City Laredo Calaveras ChipinqueChupaderas DurangoDolorosa Guadalupe Navidad TampicoBankrupt barrios bad lighting Pot holes every 50 yards No sidewalks just gravel Shaking off the alkaline dust collected on our clothes like fine ground boneRamshackle paint peeled shacks Earth scorched down beaten& always the railroad tracks splitting the poorest among the rest of usEmpty corner lots with overzealous dandelionsBrilliant Indian blankets maroon to butteryMexican hats igniting green clover aflame for miles Razor sharp Johnson grass up to our necks Wasps & yellow jackets zooming overhead Mongrel dogs chasing us down As we made for the uppermost branchesalong twisted mesquites muscling their mangled limbsPlucking wild blackberries in abandoned lots we called woodsOur teeth & t-shirts stained with their blood…